Video 6:15
Are paper cuts a sign of things to come?

As Fairfax Media reduces its broadsheet newspapers to a more compact size, the move has prompted questions about print media's future.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The conventional wisdom is that newspapers are on death row, but today the Fairfax flagships took on a new look, and they hope, a new lease on life.

The Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald were launched in compact size - some would say tabloid - ending decades as broadsheets. The move will cut costs, but the question is: will it save the Fairfax empire from terminal decline?

Heather Ewart reports.

HEATHER EWART, REPORTER: It was a long time coming. Readers of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age woke this morning to the end of an era. The old broadsheets had been replaced with new-look smaller papers, tabloid size, but to be called "compacts".

GREG HYWOOD, CEO, FAIRFAX: It's a modern format for modern times and it's good for our readers, who can have quick, easy access to quality journalism.

HEATHER EWART: Is this a step in a whole new direction for Fairfax?

ERIC BEECHER, FORMER EDITOR, SMH: No, no, it's not. This is a step in cutting the costs as the currency of newspapers disappears. That's all it is.

GREG HYWOOD: No, no. It is about providing readers and our advertisers who support the paper the best possible newspaper we can produce.

HEATHER EWART: That of course is for the readers to decide. So far, the feedback is reasonably positive, helped along by a concerted Fairfax sales pitch.

What do you think of the look of it?

VOX POP: Well it's gonna be easier to manage on the train, that's for sure.

VOX POP II: I sort of good used to The Age being just slightly bigger over the years, but, yeah, I s'pose we'll get used to it.

VOX POP III: Actually that is fantastic. I don't know why it has taken 'em so long to come up with a size like this.

HEATHER EWART: This has certainly been a work in progress. Months of marketing research and for weeks both newspapers have been doing practice runs preparing for today's launch.

ANDREW HOLDEN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE AGE: What we've been doing for a couple of weeks now is we've been taking the broadsheet front page and then converting that to compact to see how we might take the tone of the paper and the emphasis of the story across onto the front page.

HEATHER EWART: The new smaller size has in fact been canvassed for years, but some former editors an publishers say Fairfax didn't have the will to go ahead with it, blinded by the so-called rivers of gold provided by classified advertising 10 years ago. Instead of downsizing, the company invested in big new printing plants in both cities.

ERIC BEECHER: I mean, I think definitely the Fairfax board over the last decade has been incredibly negligent on behalf of their shareholders and on behalf of their readers and particularly on behalf of Australian journalism. And they should've acted in all sorts of ways eight or 10 years ago when it was obvious to a lot of us and should've been obvious to a lot of them except no-one on the board knew anything about newspapers that this was going to happen and that the internet was going to eat their lunch.

HEATHER EWART: The reality is these changes signify an even bigger shift towards online. What Fairfax can't say publicly, but what everyone in the industry knows, is that going compact is a stepping stone towards phasing out newspapers, perhaps within the next five years, as fewer and fewer people buy them or advertise in them.

STEVE HARRIS, FORMER PUBLISHER, THE AGE: Probably the one day of the week that's still profitable is Saturday because of the support from the classifieds and the omnibus appeal and catching up at the end of the week, etc. So that's probably reasonably safe and you could probably make an economic argument for that. But the other days of the week that either don't have the circulation and/or the ad revenue to keep them going, then they've gotta go.

GREG HYWOOD: There's no point predicting end games for everything. All we know is that we're in a period of significant change and rather than hanging back and being dragged along by it, we're at the forefront of it.

HEATHER EWART: That also means cutting costs. City printing plants will be sold and last year 1900 editorial and production staff were laid off by Fairfax. Former Herald editor Peter Fray was one of those to help instigate the cuts and eventually took redundancy himself.

PETER FRAY, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, SMH: I know it was a very painful thing to do. It was a necessary thing to do. One of the reasons I left I think was that I was going to face during another round of it and it was possibly someone else's turn to do it.

GREG HYWOOD: You need good-quality journalism and you need a substantial number of good-quality journalists to provide a competitive advantage.

HEATHER EWART: The same number that you have now?

GREG HYWOOD: Well, you know, numbers always change.

PETER FRAY: The question really is: are the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age producing the journalism that the audience wants and do they have sufficient number of people to do it?

HEATHER EWART: There's no answer yet, as Fairfax goes all out in pursuit of the digital future. It argues it's a leader in the field and 75 per cent of its readers already access it online. That's soon to be tested when Fairfax starts charging for some of those services.

GREG HYWOOD: What that is is a metered model. It means that once you open a certain number of stories each month, you'll be asked to pay. And we believe that many of our readers will be prepared to do that.

ERIC BEECHER: Nowhere near enough people physically can pay for it online to support the kind of investment, particularly in journalism, that they have now.

GREG HYWOOD: Look, we have very strong advertising through our tablets, very strong advertising through our websites, very good and sound advertising through our newspapers. It's just a different world.

HEATHER EWART: A world where reporters and editors aren't calling the shots the way they once did. It's the readers and advertisers who'll shape the future of the press.